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Friday, May 23, 2008

5th Blog Birthday (The History of Headspacej: Part 2)

Five years is a legitimate milestone, I think. To keep any project going for five years means that it matters to you, that the inputs required are justified by the results. I feel that way about my blog; and that the longer I keep it going, the more I like it, because it keeps growing and I can go back and dig through more of our personal history. I'm never quite sure why other people read it, and I certainly don't expect anyone other than me to be interested in past years and months of posts, but last year I pulled out some highlights up to two years old, like a sort of baby book from blog birth (May '03) to toddler-aged. I thought I'd try another archive dive for the remaining three years, the posts that stand out for me among the mundane kid photos and repetitive weekend reports. Consider it a greatest-hits album from a washed-up blogger.

It's fun to skim through my past like this and see patterns and holes. When I added the Dr. Seuss tagline a couple years ago, it was a direct reflection of the purpose of the site -- to record the bits of fun and beauty of our lives. As a result, it is an incomplete history, entirely omitting and ignoring the stresses, ugliness and boring routines of normal life. Truth be told, I don't really think we've had our share of down times, but the near-total lack of negativity in these pages does start to look like a delusion. Also, I was being a little facetious before about the mundane kid photos. I know that my most loyal handful of readers come here exclusively for those, and after going through 36 months of posts, I don't feel like I've let them down. Safe to say, the Hiebert children are well represented.

Thanks again to those of you who do drop in and leave comments. These things are fun, and fun is good.

You most certainly don't let us down in the kid photos/updates department. That being said, I also very much enjoy the other topics you hit upon just as much as the kids - I just don't always "gush" as much about them :)

Whew - just caught up on a whole lot of your latest blog posts. Sorry - we've been spending all the nice days outside! I love all the pics - can't even pic out a fave, they are all great. Love the recap of the last 5 years, nice. I echo Ryan's plea for help with depleting our "ale & lager fridge" contents in July. Our house is now 1.5 years cat-free (with the exception of outside, and our porch), so maybe even Tan could visit too without feeling like death.

Thanks for the encouragement, both of you action-packed Pletts. Not like I ever need encouragement to help people empty their ale and lager fridges, but it's a great offer. We'll see how it goes -- tossing around a few different ideas right now.

And Tannis, I think this stemmed from my recently blogged desire to see Nine Inch Nails in Winnipeg.

Tannis, you are welcome to my share of the ale & lager. I've never been a big fan. And yes, when James moved in, the cats moved out. I'm quite enjoying the cat-free living space I must say. We do keep one around though, outside, for sake of mice and rodents.

I only go to your blog about once a month to do my "marathon read" and "picture show". It is so nice to catch up on your family and get a sense of the fun times in Kelowna. While life ain't all fun and we all know there's the bad and the ugly along with the good, I personally still like to delude myself into believing that life in the Okanagan is more fun. More than the beautiful pictures of your kids, I love the read ... your way of putting words together is to me a more amazing craft than your photographic capabilities. Don't ever quit. Looking forward to that hard cover coming out one of these days!

Hey, thanks for the kind words, Aunt Carol -- much appreciated. I consider my writing here to be redundant and devoid of real character, but really, it's the only writing I'm doing, so I can't pretend I have these deep wells of "real writing" kicking around.

Also, I don't know that life in the Okanagan is inherently more fun than anywhere else...but I do believe that it is easier to have fun here than some places. So we can be sorta lazy about our fun and still have more than our share of it.